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Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

politico.eu

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Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#91

Post by jiggunjer »

_ph_ wrote: post #64
einpoklum wrote: post #42

Can someone post an English translation of the "theses" or questions in the Wahl-o-mat? When I hear about such initiatives I am always wary of this kind of polling manipulation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

Here it goes, all are phrased as statements, to which you can agree, be neutral or disagree: 1: There should be a general speed limit on all Autobahn roads. 2: Germany should increase its defense budget. 3: Young adults at the age of 16 should be allowed to vote in federal elections. [current age is 18] 4: Subsidies for wind power turbines should be stopped. 5: Stronger legal limitations for the abilities of landlord…

lol fugitives. I think you mean refugees.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#92

Post by Helmut10001 »

_ph_ wrote: post #33
bakuninsbart wrote: post #9

I hope not too many people base their voting decision on the amount of similarity they have in their answers with parties. The way questions are phrased do not always give parties a way to answer (Yes/No/Neutral) in the same way. As an example, 2 parties could both say No to a higher Co2-tax, but one of them does so because they claim climate change is a hoax, while the other one has a problem with it not being progr…

Another problem is, that currently most parties are claiming to care all about the climate and would immediately take steps to fight the climate change after the election. Just if two of those parties have been in power for the last 8 years, you might want to weight their statement accordingly :)

Correct, there is a big difference to what is "said" and what is "done". There is no measurement in the Wahlomat that compares previous goals and success rates (e.g. for those parties who were in the coalition that ruled the last 20 years). Perhaps this can be best framed under the term "trustworthiness". But it also somehow applies to other parties: AfD has a pretty low trustworthiness because their goals and actions are often entirely contradictory - e.g. in their election program, they say they are for "transparency", but their party financing is the most intransparent of all.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#93

Post by tpm »

willyt wrote: post #58
tpm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which left parties in Europe are advocating leaving the EU? I think these would be more hard-left than centre-left.

The Labour party in Britain was complicit in Brexit, otherwise it wouldn’t have happened. It is one of the only two mainstream parties that can realistically win an election. During the Brexit referendum and afterwards it was lead by someone from the left of the party who required the support of the far left to maintain his position. This resulted in the Labour party having a very unclear position on Brexit which lea…

Yes, the Labour party is quite clueless in this regard, and also Corbyn probably genuinely did not like the EU. I don't think any of the remaining big left European parties are as naive as this.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#94

Post by turbinerneiter »

nebolo wrote: post #63
enriquto wrote: post #62

Why are political parties necessary? Instead of chosing representatives in bulk we should decide democratically about each of these particular questions. Then, a professional executive power (elected independently, or simply hired) would be legally bound to implement these decisions.

You can surely see how this could be problematic? Q1: Should we lower taxes? Q2: Should we introduce 5k/month UBI?

This is a popular fantasy, but I don't think it is true. People today are already voting for parties that increase tax on them and decrease it for others. Many people vote for things that are not directly benefiting them or are even bad for them, both consciously and out of ignorance.

I vote green/left, although they tax me higher, because I think climate change and social justice is more important than whether or not I have 1k per year more or less.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#95

Post by tomthe »

sc11 wrote: post #53
tomthe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of the creators of deinwal.de Your description is spot on, although we tried to exclude votes where something did not "go far enough" for some parties. AMA.

Thanks for working on the tool and being here! Have you considered adding references to relevant sections of the party programs on the detailed thesis view? For example, it might be interesting to see on [1] that the SPD claims to be in favour of the bill they just voted against. This is just one example, but I think an easy way to compare a vote with future claims of the parties would be interesting. [1] https://btw…

Adding references to relevant sections of the party programs is an interesting idea (especially with your example) to display the discrepancies that sometimes arise between votes and programs. But that would be a lot of work on top and one would probably have to add a bunch of links for every single vote and claim in the program. We will focus on what DeinWal does.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#96

Post by maweki »

allendoerfer wrote: post #65
maweki wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren't most people disappointed by the social democrats because they don't fight hard enough for their core issues? Or if they really just bring their core issues through, they seem to be surveillance and not social issues. If you make a coalition government with the conservatives and you take their program as the coalition program, you did a bad job in forming the coalition.

> If you make a coalition government with the conservatives and you take their program as the coalition program, you did a bad job in forming the coalition. I like your reasoning. In the end (within reason) I do not care how the laws are implemented, I am voting for the party, which matches what I would like to implement.

That's why I don't understand center-left people not voting left. As if any other party would be willing to implement the program of the social democrats.

I truly believe that the outbreak of socialism within the first four years is baseless fear-mongering.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#97

Post by tomthe »

DelightOne wrote: post #36
tomthe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of the creators of deinwal.de Your description is spot on, although we tried to exclude votes where something did not "go far enough" for some parties. AMA.

Thanks for being here! deinwahl.de generally looks interesting. Some questions for you: - Is it useful to soberly look at an analysis of a few chosen questions and topics instead of looking at the fuller picture, like for example scandals the parties are involved in? How would a tool look like that includes both? - The implicit stances of the parties do not seem to really come out. The questions seem to not be design…

> Is it useful to soberly look at an analysis of a few chosen questions and topics instead of looking at the fuller picture, like for example scandals the parties are involved in? How would a tool look like that includes both?

DeinWal is only one tool and it explicitly excludes stuff like scandals and looks and promises. You don't have to vote according to the result of DeinWal, but you can use it as an additional signal.

> The implicit stances of the parties do not seem to really come out. The questions seem to not be designed for that purpose. Is this a limitation of the questions asked, a limitation of the format or are there other limiting factors?

I disagree. I think the results really reflect the stances of the parties. People on social media who post their results seem to agree with their results no matter whether they are right or left. But yes, we are limited to the actual votes of the Bundestag and that means that we can not have a question about e.g. education.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#98

Post by djbebs »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #94
nebolo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can surely see how this could be problematic? Q1: Should we lower taxes? Q2: Should we introduce 5k/month UBI?

This is a popular fantasy, but I don't think it is true. People today are already voting for parties that increase tax on them and decrease it for others. Many people vote for things that are not directly benefiting them or are even bad for them, both consciously and out of ignorance. I vote green/left, although they tax me higher, because I think climate change and social justice is more important than whether or no…

Given the amount of people arguing that the rich "don't pay their fair share" when the rich are the only ones actually paying income taxes, I would say your argument has already been disproven.

Re: Germany’s no-emotion voting guide surges despite campaign of personalities

#99

Post by tomthe »

IndySun wrote: post #45
tomthe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am one of the creators of deinwal.de Your description is spot on, although we tried to exclude votes where something did not "go far enough" for some parties. AMA.

tomthe... >AMA When the voter is presented with these vote/policy questions, are they ranked in any way, for example, is a climate question 'more valuable' than the autobahn speed. How is the order of the yes/no/neutral questions decided, for example from serious to less serious? Who decides? Who has final say on the question wording?

The user of the quiz can skip a question, answer it normally or "like" it with a heart-symbol. Then it is counted twice.

The DeinWal-Team (Martin, Sophie and I) decided the selection, wording and ordering of the questions. We tried to be as neutral and fair as possible. We tried to use only votes where the outcome does not contradict some party values (e.g. because a party thinks a vote "does not go far enough").

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